S249. What Are You Going to Do with That? Writers Side-Stepping the Adjunct Trap

Room M100 B&C, Mezzanine Level
Saturday, April 11, 2015
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

 

Most MFA graduates will not collect their diplomas and step into tenure-track professorships. Every year, hundreds step onto the overworked, underpaid adjunct track. The writers on this panel will share how they have forged sustainable careers in the entertainment, media, cultural nonprofit, marketing, and training industries instead, while maintaining their identities as writers. To teach or not to teach is not the only question. We live in a world of words; how can you get paid for yours?


Participants

Moderator:

Erin Keane is the author of the poetry collections Demolition of the Promised Land, Death-Defying Acts, and The Gravity Soundtrack. She works as the arts reporter and theatre critic for WFPL, Louisville, Kentucky's NPR station, where she produces Unbound, a short fiction radio show.

Dan Bernitt is a Brooklyn-based writer and performer whose performances have been featured in theatre festivals internationally. His books, Dose: Plays & Monologues and Phi Alpha Gamma, were finalists for the Lambda Literary Award. He is the associate director of digital marketing at the New School.

Daniel Bowman Jr. is the author of two books: A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country: Poems, and Beggars in Heaven: A Novel. He is associate professor of English at Taylor University.

Stacy Barton is the author of Surviving Nashville, Like Summer Grass, and the forthcoming novella Lily Harp. She is a freelance scriptwriter for Disney and other international production companies, and her literary fiction and poetry have appeared in Gargoyle, Potomac Review, and Real South.

Leah Falk is a poet who creates text for the page and for performance. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Field, and on stage in Vancouver, Indianapolis, and Ann Arbor. By day, she is a programs coordinator for a Jewish cultural non-profit, and also runs the blog MFA Day Job.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center